June 5th, 0070. Zeonic. Zum City, Principality of Zeon. Hilda Adams POV.
Within the expansive cafeteria of Zeonic's headquarters sat a blue-haired British metallurgist sat alone at table with a bowl of tomato soup and a small grilled cheese sandwich as her company. HildaAdams (ex-Bidan), was not eating, alone, rather she was waiting to dine with someone who was fifteen minutes late.
Said person came speedwalking to her table, frustration and stress slightly shown on his face, though it had nothing to do with her, instead being the reason he was tardy.
"Sorry I'm late, some idiot janitor thought my notes were trash and threw them away while I was out of the office. I then had to track that guy down before they got thrown in the recycle, and sort through the pile until I got everything back."
"You know, maybe you wouldn't have your notes thrown away if you didn't leave them scattered across your workplace in a mess with half having wear and tear, and the other being a mess of scribbles and edits. We exist in the computer age for a reason." Hilda said teasingly.
"Everything I write down exists for a select purpose with my workplace having a set order."
"A chaotic order." Hilda added playfully, with a groan response.
"An order where everything is in its own proper place. Besides, I always work best with a pencil and paper. Computers offer far more, especially what we have from Cyberware, but they just don't have the same creativity I have with the old-fashioned. Explained Tem Ray, taking his seat directly across from Hilda.
When Hilda had first joined Zeonic, she had been placed within the mobile suit division working directly beneath Tem as a new head of the metallurgy section. To her pleasant surprise, it seemed that Zeonic was in need of her talents as they were doing their best to transition from super steel to Titanium alloy for the Zaku-II, at the same time also experimenting with ceramic composites to increase flexibility and joint movements.
While Titanium was easily accessible to private companies in the Universal Century thanks to mining in the asteroid belt, it had rarely been used in great size beyond a few select starship classes due to the costs in comparison to traditional super steel. Despite the traditional drawbacks, Zeonic forged ahead with their plans for titanium mobile suits. It was an effort that was heavily invested in not only for the potential profits, but from corporate rumors that Zeonic's main competitor Zimmad was beginning the process for their first mobile suit.
While Hilda hadn't radically shifted the program, she helped Zeonic's metallurgists look at the process in a couple of new directions with progress in her first month being quicker than the previous three at the start of the year. This seemed to please Tem and the rest of her superiors, assuring Hilda of her job security beyond whatever reasons had pushed her and Kamille into the Zabi's radar.
After her first week at Zeonic, Tem had surprised her one day by offering to have lunch with her when before she had sat alone. What had first been an awkward encounter had turned into a pleasant conversation that repeated itself on a daily basis.
What was so enjoyable about conversing with Tem Ray was how invested he was in their conversations, primarily when it came to the subject of their shared work and Hilda's thoughts on mobile suits and Zeonic's other products. Before in her previous line of work, Hilda was rarely given high worth due to being just a simple metallurgist who was only necessary to perform a small part of the overall project that her superiors most likely felt could be done by numerous others in her field with little difference. She didn't have the benefits of being a flashy engineer like her ex-husband Franklin. Franklin was perhaps the greatest indicator of how much she hated her old work environment as at first in her relationship he enjoyed hearing her speak about her work, as time went on everything had to be tied back to him, with Hilda only existing to help in the creation of his accomplishments.
Tem on the other hand took her seriously in her intellectual worth, treating her as an equal and inviting her into the discourse on Zeonic's current design plans for robotics alongside with his colleagues. Everytime they spoke often involved an intense debate of some field of engineering, it was a rather refreshing and exciting form of discourse for Hilda that she hadn't experienced since her college days.
Outside of work they also found a field of surprising common social interests, including a shared love of Doctor Who that absolutely delighted Hilda as she knew it was a franchise that was rather niche in the Anglo world outside of Britain. She had never expected anyone within the colonies to be familiar with the show about a man with a blue box, though it should have been rather unsuprising for Tem considering his Canadian origins.
From Tem Ray she had gained one of her first friends at Zeonic. Turning the single mother from a once isolated immigrant to having a rather healthy and growing social circle within Zeonic. It was one of the many growing reasons that Hilda was glad she left for Zeon with Kamille.
When Tem sat down Hilda remembered something she had been meaning to ask earlier today but had forgotten.
"By the way, what did you think of the files I sent you yesterday?" She asked.
"The what? You didn't give me yesterday." Tem said in puzzlement, causing Hilda to slightly frown.
"I sent you a list of emails at six. I know you probably wouldn't have gone through them all after work but I was hoping you'd at least check out a little bit." Hilda said in disappointment.
Hilda's statement caused Tem to let out a soft oh in realization.
"Sorry about that. When I got home Amuro was freaking out because he messed up the coding for one of his latest projects and I had to spend a couple hours helping him fix it. After that I was to tired to check on my email so I just had some dinner and went to sleep." Tem explained, giving Hilda comfort at his reasoning.
One of their frequent non-work topics was how their lives were as single parents, though as Hilda found out after beginning her work, Tem became one through far more tragic circumstances than her messy divorce with Franklin.
As a new mother Hilda's life outside of work was centered entirely around Kamille and she loved to bring him up whenever she got the chance. Tem seemed to hold a similar level of love for his son Amuro, with a high amount of pride at the young boy's intelligence and talent, a great amount if that Haro unit is any indication.
It was another thing that Hilda liked about Tem besides being an intellectual peer, the fact that he was one of the few who shared in her tribulations as a single parent and could actually understand her experiences.
"That's okay, it wasn't anything work-related, I was just hoping you would read some of it so we could discuss it at lunch."
"Not work-related then what is it?" Tem asked.
"All the information I managed to gather my own on Lunar Titanium." Hilda said, with Tem swallowing a large bite of his sandwich in shock.
"Wait, you actually went through with it?! Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful, it's just that it's not something that I can focus on a hundred percent at the moment and I thought it you would have taken it more slowly, not in the first two months you started here." Tem said in a mixture of concern and being impressed.
In their first conversations, Tem had expanded upon his initial curiosity into the alloy that he had asked her about when he had first met, saying that he wanted to use it in a long term experimental project designed for what he termed as the "perfect mobile suit" a machine that would make the Zaku look like an antique from the early Universal Century.
His zeal when talking about the idea got the better of Hilda's curiosity, and so she decided to delve into researching the relatively new material when she had free time whenever Kamille slept. Through a combination of books and files at the Zum City library and whatever she could obtain on the rapidly expanding internet, Hilda had gotten what she felt to be the most information anyone could gain in a private venture. It was quite a load, though it was only a fraction of what she could understand if this was an official corporate project for Zeonic.
"Well I never like to leave anything half-done, even if it's just a hobby or personal project. I had a lot of spare time and it was pretty fun to look into. Once I started researching I just couldn't keep my eyes away until I learned all I can. To think we have the strongest construction material and we're just sitting on it because it's too expensive and can't be used in conventional welding techniques."
"Those are very valid reasons to prevent investment." Tem countered.
"Yes, and centuries ago the airplane was an inefficient mode of transportation reserved for the rich, now look at where we live today. Honestly since moving to Zeon I feel like the rest of humanity is too content in the status quo. It's like moving most of our people to steel cylinders has made them forget about the concept of innovation."
"Now you're starting to sound like our Prime Minister." Tem said playfully, having enough personal experience with Gihren to be an expert.
"When his speeches are something that constantly comes up in casual conversation and are constantly blared upon the news, the rhetoric tends to be imprinted upon you subliminally. Now I know why you people constantly shout Sieg Zeon, even if you are stealing from Hitler." Hilda said in slight snark.
"Just give it a year and you'll have membership within those people." Tem said. He had lived within Zeon for the same amount of time and was now starting to consider himself a Spacenoid, something that was rather inevitable considering the fact that he was living with Deikun's family.
"Thrilling discussions about state propaganda and national culture aside, I can't thank you enough for putting the time and effort behind this. If It's enough I think we can give a good presentation to Sakomoto and have him shift some funds for some experiments. I've already got Gihren's support on the matter and he's been stockpiling Lunar Titanium as discreetly as possible, but unfortunately he can't convince Sakomoto as he'd rather stick with the trusty profits of the Zaku. Hopefully this will make him budge." Tem said, unintentionally flexing his connections to Gihren Zabi as if it was the most casual thing in the world.
Whenever Tem brought up his connections to the Zabis and Deikuns, the topic brought a great amount of discomfort to Hilda. The only reason that she had her job was because apparently she was on a list of important people made by Gihren Zabi. After she had settled in, State Security had left her alone and not once had she been contacted by the Zabis or any intermediaries with a request of her services or something to do with Kamille's Newtype powers. In other words, they gave her a cushy job and left her alone.
Perhaps her work was simply enough to please her silent benefactor, though the lack of contact was still unsettling. In her first interactions with Tem she thought that he had sent by Gihren, but while he had brought up the crown prince multiple times, it was due to personal affairs and he seemed rather oblivious to the real reason she was working at Zeonic. By now she liked to believe that she had enough of a read on Tem's character to know that his interactions with her had nothing to do with the Zabis, though there was always an underlying caution within Hilda in case she was ever proven wrong.
"So you'd want me to work on this new project with you?" Hilda asked, curious at his exact choice of words.
"Sure, I may know how to build a mobile suit blind folded, but I'm a little lost onto the exact science of their materials. Lunar Titanium is a completely new field from me and I'll probably screw up along the way without Anaheim's notes. My work won't be possible without your research and expertise, so I'd love to have you on as my right hand. Even if we don't make a working suit quickly, just the sheer amount of information we can gain on Lunar Titanium would be a gold mine to the company, plus it would put you on the fast track for promotions." Tem said, adding a small smile to Hilda's face.
For the next forty minutes they shifted the conversation and covered a wide variety of topics, both casual and work related, before they headed back to their jobs.
At the end of lunch, Tem made to leave, only to look over Hilda's shoulder at something or someone, and sat down with newly aroused nervousness. Hilda looked behind her, yet couldn't find anything out of the ordinary.
"I just remembered, so this Friday some of the project are going to go out for drinks at the bar across the street. It's not really my kind of style, but I skipped the last few outings and I figured it'd be a nice way to spend the night. I was wondering if maybe you wanted to come with us?" Tem asked, nearly stammering out his request in uncertainty.
Hilda did her best to suppress a rising blush and at first panicked at the implications, thinking that Tem had just asked her out to a date.
'It's not a date, it's just a casual get together for work with lots of people you know. If it wasn't him then someone else would have offered you. The fact that you're both single means nothing.' Hilda tried to reassure herself with logic. Fortunately Tem choose to break eye contact for awhile, allowing her to collect herself and formulate a response.
"I would love to, but I can't really go out at the moment as I'd be leaving Kamille at home." Hilda said.
"I don't mean to sound rude, but you haven't found any potential babysitters?" Tem asked, knowing fully that Hilda had no familial or strong social ties in Zum City.
"I've been trying to focus on settling in here and getting a feel on the city. I'm lucky enough that the company has its daycare plan, and I don't know anyone well enough to just drop my son off on them, even if for a few hours." Hilda explained in a apologetic tone.
Tem seemed to understand the matter and was almost about to leave the table, but then a wild idea struck him and he decided to take the extra step and convince her.
"So what I'm about to say is a little crazy, and I know it'll require a great deal of trust from you, and it's perfectly fine if you say no, but hear me out. There's someone I know who I think would be more than happy to watch over Kamille for a few hours. She's an experienced mother, great with kids, and I trust her with my life. Although I admittedly do have to ask if she's free on friday."
"Who?" Hilda asked.
One explanation and convincing along with a phone call later would lead to Kamille Adams being babysat by Astraia Tor Deikun on a Friday night while Hilda went to her first social event in months. It was a large step taken by Hilda that would lead both her and her son towards a completely unseen, but wonderful life.
June 19th, 0070. Zeon Zum Deikun Memorial Hospital. Zum City, Principality of Zeon. Cecilia Irene POV
Within one of the hospital's hundreds of patients rooms, Cecilia Irene lied glumly on one of the hospital bed's having nothing to do other than to flip the channels on the cable television within her room, immobile thanks to a heavily fractured right leg.
Two days ago she had been helping her family's floral shop by carrying out a bunch of small tasks for her father after she had returned from work. While her salary as Chief of Staff for Gihren was more than enough to make her financially independent of her family's business, working with plants had always been a delightful activity for Cecilia and she always wished to do her part to make her family succeed a little more, even if now thanks to Gihren's patronage they were in the best financial state they had been in years.
When she was taking stock of inventory, unfortunately a couple of rusty nails had led to the collapse of an aisle that was right next to her. Fortunately she was quick enough to prevent her whole body from being crushed, but she wasn't so lucky with her right leg taking the worst brunt of it.
While she wouldn't suffer any permanent injuries and should be able to go back to work without a cast within the week, to Cecilia it was practically the end of the world due to her inability to return to her duties, even if for a short period of time.
With both the executive and judicial branches in flux thanks to the tearing down of the old Parliament and constructing of the new Zenith, the national bureaucracy was in a state of overdrive, especially with it being a little over half a year before the elections. Her workload had been increased in order to help Gihren coordinate all of his activities across the nation, something that she had thrust herself into completely with her usual enthusiasm and bravado.
Now thanks to a stupid accident she was stuck here while Zeon was changing with each second. Could she be melodramatic? Sure, but it just didn't feel right to do nothing while Gihren was leading the charge on pushing Spacenoids to a better path.
A couple of light knocks at her door brought Cecilia out of her sulking. "Come in." She stated softly.
Through the door stepped a rather tall figure dressed in jeans, a black and maroon jacket, shades, and a cap for the Zum City Astros. At first Cecilia was suspicious when she saw a small patch of silver hair, with her thoughts being quickly confirmed by his voice.
"Special delivery for one Cecilia Irene." Gihren Zabi said, lifting a plastic bag with styrofoam food containers.
"Gihren!" Cecilia shouted, though quickly lowering her voice as she didn't want the entire hospital to know that the Prime Minister and Crown Prince was visiting incognito. She may be the most important member of his staff, but Cecilia's lack of media appearances allowed her a great deal of anonymity that no one batted an eye when she was admitted.
"What are you doing here?" Cecilia asked in a harsh whisper. Gihren merely chuckled in response and walked in, Jared flanking behind him and closing the door.
"Oh well, I was in the neighborhood and I was hungry for hospital food so I thought I dropped by for some lunch." Gihren said, though the overwhelming scent from his bag showed that it was an obvious lie.
"Hospital food is crap Gihren, the stuff I've had the past few days is worse than space liner food." Cecilia said, playing into his joke a little bit.
"I'm actually not joking when I say that it's good, was practically the only good thing from this place when Sasro and I had our near death moments." Gihren said, placing the food on a table next to Cecilia's bed and sitting down at a chair right next to her while Jared stood guard at the door.
At first Cecilia was confused on what he was talking about until she remembered how on the news three years ago he got run over by a drunk driver at New Years. It was quite the talk of Side 3 for weeks, not only due to Gihren's position, but the conspiracy theories that sprung from it claiming that it was an assassination attempt towards the Zabis. It wasn't too far fetched now considering Sasro's near death.
"Why'd you come here if you had so many bad memories at the hospital?" Cecilia asked in concern, talking about not only his and Sasro's visits, but the death of their mothers.
Gihren shifted his gaze from her and appeared to have a far off look in his eyes that Cecilia could barely observe. "It's a hospital, bad stuff happens here all the time, it's just an unfortunate part of life. Besides it may sound strange, but getting run over was the best thing that ever happened to me. It gave me a new perspective on life and changed me for the better. You really wouldn't have liked who I was before if we met." Gihren said.
Cecilia was about to ask for clarification, only for Gihren to stop her with his returning gaze that now sported a wide smile. "As for why I'm here, I couldn't leave my favorite staff member suffer alone without some moral support and the best noodles in Zum City." Gihren said warmly.
The fact that he had referred to her as his "favorite staff member" brought about a great blush on Cecilia's cheeks. She was thankful that if Gihren noticed then she could simply pass it off as being ill, even if she was in the hospital for a broken leg and not a virus.
"Wait a minute, how did you even come here with no one noticing you? Shouldn't my room be hounded by the press any minute?" Cecilia said, asking both out of concern for her and Gihren's privacy and wanting to switch the conversation topic.
In response Gihren simply pulled off both his baseball cap and shades in a presentational manner. "You'd be surprised how a small change in fashion will cause people to overlook you."
"You're a real Clark Kent, huh?" Cecilia said sarcastically.
"No, it really works! So you know how everytime I'm on tv or on the internet, people see me wearing my uniform? If I search myself online then all of the photos that pop up will be myself in black and gold, with the few outliers being me just wearing western business. So when people think of Gihren Zabi, all they think about is the 'Fascist' who wears his uniform as pajamas. If I wear casual and cover my hair and eyes, I'm just another face in the crowd." Gihren explained, his argument making a lot of sense to Cecilia.
"And if that fails and someone starts looking at him, Lord Gihren whips out his phone and starts speaking Spanish." Jared chimed in.
"You speak Spanish?" Cecilia questioned in shock. While it wasn't unbelievable for Spacenoids to speak another language than English, the heavy cultural and racial syncretism of the colonies forced everytime to use English as their conversational tongue to easily engage in business and social affairs. Those who didn't speak English were mostly first-gen Spacenoids with second and third gens like Cecilia and Gihren only knowing English as their tongue.
"Si, es un idioma hermoso. El mayor tesoro del arbol romantico." Gihren said, flustering Cecilia slightly with how pretty the words sounded rolling off of his tongue. Truthfully my grammar sucks at times and tenses are a bitch but I at least know enough to read and speak casually. It's actually the second language with my first being Japanese from back in college. A native speaker will probably see through me, but we don't have too many Hispanics in Zum City so I think I pulled it off."
"Actually Lord Gihren, when you spoke on the phone as we were picking up the noodles, I saw this one guy in line who was giving you a combination of a dirty look and utter confusion, so I think you at least failed in that conversation."
Cecilia couldn't help but laugh as Gihren lost his cool and sported a look of shame and defeat upon this revelation. "Well it looks like it's back to Japanese for me."
"Whatever the case Senor Zabi, I'm just happy that you managed to make it okay without anyone noticing." Cecilia said, bringing a small smile to Gihren's face. "Even though you're probably pushing Jared and the rest to the limits of their paygrade." Ceclia then added in snark, a small smirk from Jared showing he non-verbally agreed.
Gihren rolled his eyes, "Please, I'm pretty damn tame compared to the stuff Kycillia pulls. Every other week she likes to go out to the field in some sort of mission for State Security, thus raising the stakes of what should be simple missions. I swear it's like she think's she's some sort of James Bond. Plenty of people in the Guard draw a pool on who gets to guard her, Jared here is lucky that he's got the experience to stay on my detail permanently.
"That's just a rumor my Lord, nothing official." Jared looked flushed and was silent for a few seconds on how to formulate a response, "Well, while it always an honor to guard a member of the Zabi family, being part of Lady Kycillia's detail can be quite a rewarding challenge at times."
"In other words she's a pain in the ass to watch over." Gihren said.
"Your words not mine sir." Jared retorted.
"Anyways, I'm starving. Now I picked up both spicy and regular, so take your pick." Gihren said.
For the next hour Gihren and Cecilia had a rather casual lunch-in, both fortunate enough that no doctors or nurses choose to enter the room at the current time. To Cecilia it was no more different to their usual weekly meals, though something about this felt more personal and special, due to the fact that Gihren not only refused to speak of work because she was on "sick leave", but that he had willingly gone out of his way to visit her when he could either be doing business of the state or spend time with his family.
Times like these were moments that Cecilia treasured as she was able to get to know the real Gihren Zabi, not the mythic leader who Side 3 was devoted to, not the wicked authoritarian that Earth made him out to be, rather just plain old Gihren Zabi. Gihren was a nerd, had an obsession with rock and roll, swore like a sailor, was predictable in his unpredictability, and someone who refused to partake in the standard image that went with his position. Yet he was kind, passionate, dauntless, talented, a visionary who always strive to improve the lives of Zeon's people and fulfilled all of his responsibilities as a leader. He was the perfect politician to serve under, yet there were times when Cecilia longed for a friendly relationship outside of work, where moments like this were common instead of exceptional.
As Gihren left Cecilia tried to tell herself that there were several types of bosses that went of their way to visit their employees when they were injured. That Gihren's behavior was not in anyway special and he would visit plenty of other people in the government if they took on a stay at the hospital. She wasn't special or meant anything to him.
Right?
June 30th, 0070. Alice Zabi Park. Zum City, Principality of Zeon. Third Person POV
Two months ago Artesia had been flipping through the channels on her television and found a sports anime called Queen of the Derby. It was a show about a highschool teenage girl as she and hear teammates of their Roller derby club competed to be the number one Derby team in Side 6. While the show was not too exceptionally amazing and followed the bog standard sports anime in most of its cliches, to Artesia it was an amazing experience to watch with her being on the edge of her seat with every episode.
Wanting to experience what her favorite characters did (though not being able to actually compete in derby due to her young age) Artesia begged her mother to buy a pair of roller skates so that she could be a skater. To Artesia's pleasant surprise after attending a few instructional classes, she was a natural and could practically skate for hours with relative ease. Skating became Artesia's favorite hobby and she tried to skate as much as possible with plans for reserving a roller rink for her birthday party.
While Artesia loved the sport greatly, there was just one problem that came with it.
"Woah, woah, woah, ahhh!" Cried out Amuro Ray, landing on the park concrete with a great oof.
Artesia lightly rolled up to her best friend, letting out a soft and disappointed sigh upon seeing her best friend trip over himself, again.
Within their friendship was a dynamic that followed a rather cliche standard. While Amuro excelled at all of his subjects and school and could do wonders with technology, Artesia was the more physically active of the duo and was a major star within their PE class.
While it would not be fair to call Artesia a jock as she would have probably been the smartest in her class with the absence of Amuro, Amuro fell into the role of a nerd perfectly with his aversion to sports and lack of any physical ability.
'It could be worse.' Artesia lamented. At least Amuro was actually trying to skate as best as he could with his lousy balance and poor strength. When they had first become friends Amuro did his best to never partake in anything physical. Nowadays Amuro at least participated in PE, even if he failed at almost everything and was a favorite target at dodgeball.
While Amuro's exceptional Newtype potential should have helped him in sports, Amuro had told her before on how his Newtype perception only helped him to realize how he would mess up seconds before he made a mistake. Dodgeball was a sort of hell to the Terran-born as he could predict many of the balls that went towards him, but his lack of agility almost always made him get hit. If Artesia wasn't actively protecting him, he would do his best to get out early and sit on the sidelines for the rest of the class.
Today he fared little better in skating as he could rarely get more than a quarter of a meter on his own before slipping and falling. It was rather fortunate that he had protective padding on all of his joints and a hard helmet, though Amuro would still likely end up with light bruises when they went home.
"Arty, can we please stop? I'll never get good at skating!" Amuro whined, sulking as he sat on the concrete.
"Yes you can! I fell lots of times when I first started learning and look where I am now." Artesia said, skating a few laps around Amuro to prove her point. What she refrained from saying however was the fact that Amuro fell more times today then Artesia had during her first week of learning.
"What's the point if I'm going to fall on my but every time?! If I can't run laps then I'll never skate!" Amuro protested, pouting with his arms crossed in a heavily dissatisfied manner.
Seeing her best friend be so resigned to failure brought Artesia's attitude down greatly.
"I'm sorry. It's just that I love skating and I want us to do it everyday. You never gave up when I didn't know anything about robots. Now I'm good at something and I want to teach you, like how you let me build Haro." Artesia said dourly.
Feeling her dejection and sadness through his Newtype senses, Amuro's mood flipped quickly when he realized just how much skating meant to her. She did bring up a good point on how even though she was clueless at robotics or other STEM subjects, Amuro always let her join in on his projects, and she always stuck around even though there were probably times where she was lost or incredibly bored.
Understanding how he'd be a terrible friend and hypocrite if he quit now, Amuro let out a soft sigh and got back to his feet, surprising Artesia with his efforts.
"Alright, but just one more time and that's it!" Amuro declared, though his 'one more time' was in reality the first of many more times if he was pushed to it.
Lightening up at Amuro's effort, Artesia resolved to do her best to make sure that on his next attempt that he would make some form of progress so that he wouldn't give up on her, not knowing that he was actually willing to do more for her sake.
Looking at Amuro and then her general environment, Artesia thought hard on how to teach Amuro considering she was still technically an amateur, even if she was incredibly talented at the sport. The lack of structural supports for Amuro to lean upon as he skated made Artesia regret the fact that she choose the first day to teach him when they were outdoors and not somewhere more appropriately like the school gym or the nearby roller rink.
Artesia continued to contemplate how to best move forward when she noticed Gihren walking towards them with Snoopy and Jaegar from their walk. He was the one to escort both of them to the park today, though Artesia and Garma merely tagged along as it was Garma's decision to go to the park in the first place.
A couple dozen meters away, Garma and Casval were playing basketball on one of the park's many basketball courts. It was a two on two game with Casval and Garma on opposite teams while playing with two of their friends. On Garma's team was a Greco-Irish classmate named Chris Ioannides, he was the eldest son of George Ioannides who was the leader of the moderate Social Dems and a part of Degwin's inner circle. On Casval's team was a platinum blond girl named Aina Sahalin, someone who was introduced to Casval and Garma by Gihren with the three of them now being close best friends.
While Artesia thought of asking her brother for help, she didn't want to annoy him when he was spending time with his friends, so she skated to Gihren to ask him.
"Hey Artesia." Gihren greeted warmly, both Snoopy and Jaegar walked over to her and heavily sniffed and licked her. She always had a fascinating scent to the two Zabi hounds due to the smell of her cat Lucifer lightly clinging to her at all times.
"Hi Gihren, can you help me and Amuro for a bit?" Artesia asked politely.
"Sure, what do you need?" Gihren asked, bringing a smile to Artesia's face. If it wasn't for Garma and uncle Degwin, Gihren would be her favorite Zabi. He was always so nice to her and Casval and had protected the Deikun children so greatly after the death of their father. While she always loved Casval as her older brother, sometimes Artesia liked to imagine that Gihren was one to her.
"I need you to let Amuro hold onto you for a little bit while he skates. Could you let him hold onto your arm and make sure he doesn't fall?" Artesia asked.
"I'm sorry I suck." Amuro moaned, getting a laugh from Gihren in response.
"Sure. It's okay Amuro, we're all bad at something and nobody gets anything right on the first try. I can only skate slowly back and forward down a hall. Try and get me on a rink and I'll slip and fall without support. If I try to ice skate then my body's like jello the whole time." Gihren says, surprising Artesia greatly at this information.
"Wait, you used to skate Gihren?" Artesia asked, both her and Amuro perking their heads up curiously at the information. While she didn't know everything about his life, Gihren's physical activities were limited to running, basketball, swimming, and American football. The last one was weird to Artesia as hardly anyone played it in the colonies and Gihren seemed to hold no special love for real football, not to mention that he called it soccer on occasion. It was a strange word and Artesia had no idea what correlation it had to football.
Gihren slightly freaked out for a second with a small degree of nervousness felt by the two Newtypes before quickly disappearing.
"Yeah, it was several years ago but I gave up and I don't really want to try it again. Not that you shouldn't Amuro, you'll probably do a better job than me!" Gihren said, not wanting his defeatism on the sport to discourage Amuro from partaking in it.
Artesia and Amuro shared a knowing look with each other, then shrugging whatever they had felt off. While they both liked Gihren, he was admittedly very weird at times and how he had briefly acted was nothing out of the ordinary that they needed to be concerned over.
After throwing a chew toy to Snoopy and Jaeger to distract them for a few minutes as they played tug of war, Gihren let Amuro hand onto his right arm, with Artesia struggling to decide how to coach her friend.
She then asked Gihren to walk slowly for a minute, allowing Amuro to glide on his skates without having to move. When that was done, she asked Amuro to gently try to move his feet forward in a skating motion. Amuro attempted to do so and nearly slipped with his poor balance, only standing due to his tight grip on Gihren.
Despite his lack of stability, Artesia asked him to keep trying for a few minutes as she closely watched how his skates were positioning themselves. After a short while Artesia finally figured out what Amuro was getting so wrong.
"I know what's wrong, when you're skating you're trying to push one foot back while the other is still in the air. When you do that both of your feet are off the ground and you fall everytime. You just got to do what you do when you walk. Keep one foot down while the other moves forward, then move that foot when the first one hits the ground."
"But when I'm walking I'm not still moving forward from the last step I took when I stopped." Amuro argued.
"I think what you should do Amuro is think like a spacenoid. When you're in space in a normal suit and using a jetpack, you use the verniers on your pack to accelerate forward. You'll always be in motion due to the weightlessness of space, but you keep on using your verniers to push in acceleration and increased your speed. It's the same principle as skating. Both times you'll always be in motion, but each time you move your leg to skate you'll be pushing your verniers so to speak." Gihren chimed in.
"Ohhh. It all makes so much sense now!" Amuro exclaimed.
Artesia gave herself a soft facepalm and shook her head at how Gihren had managed to explain in less than a minute what she had been failing at for over an hour.
'Of course he only gets it when someone uses science to explain. He's such a nerd.' Artesia thought in a mental tone of both frustration and endearment.
"Now that I know what's wrong, I think I can teach you now by myself now. Thanks Gihren, I'll call you if I need help again." Artesia said, the Crown Prince nodding with a smile and returning to his two dogs who were done with his tug of war.
"Okay, now hold my right hand with your left. I'll skate forward and push you on. When I say go, you'll move one leg forward and keep the other one still. Go right and you push your right, go left and you'll push your left. If we can get that done then you can do it quicker later." Artesia explained, Amuro nodded his head in frightful understanding.
For the next ten minutes the two Newtypes did as Artesia commanded, with Amuro doing his best to keep balance and not move both of his feet off the ground at the same time.
Slowly but surely, Amuro got better and would launch and return his leg quicker at each time. Now he was getting to do it with little effort while his balance was starting to remain stable.
Wanting to try something out, Artesia let go with Amuro's eyes focused intently on the path ahead, and then she gave him orders.
"Go right." Artesia commanded, Amuro doing so. "Go left." Amuro did so again. "Go right." Amuro did the action successfully, and looked back to Artesia afterwords when he heard her voice growing slightly more distant. When he did so Amuro was surprised when he traveled a whole two meters on his own. Not something too impressive, but it was a big step for the brunette.
"I did it?" Amuro said to himself in amazement.
"You did it!" Artesia affirmed. "See I knew you could d-" Artesia's word was cut off when her skate caught a rather small rock and she hit the ground for the first time today.
While he knew it was wrong, seeing his best friend fall brought a small amount of satisfaction to Amuro as it happened right after his achievement.
"Well, well. It looks like the student has become the-"Amuro's statement was caught off as he attempted to skate to her to gloat, when he fell down and landed right next to her, their faces mere centimeters from each other.
"The student has become the what?" Artesia said, smirking at Amuro who was embarrassed at his previous smugness.
"Student." Amuro said in defeat.
Artesia patted him playfully on the back. "Don't worry Amuro you just went from failure to learning. Now you're almost a beginner."
An hour and a half later with several the two collecting a number of light bruises, they headed back home, happy that Amuro had improved from hopeless to semi-adequate.
Every week from that point on, Amuro would spend a few hours skating, joining Artesia in her classes and finally achieving his first sport that he was okay at. Months later at Artesia's birthday, the two could be found skating heavily together at the local roller rink. For the first time in his life, Amuro Ray was happy when he did something physical. It was a small taste of how much the two's friendship had greatly changed each other for the better through a bond that grew stronger by the day.
A/N: Hey everyone! I know this is more of non-traditional Gundam chapters with some romance/slice of life, though I decided to include it as it covers over three important relationships moving forward that I want to include some setup since if I focus too much on mobile suits and politics then the payoff will absolutely suck. First we have Tem and Hilda's growing relationship at Zeonic and Kamille spending the night at the Deikuns as they go out on a "not-date". Here I wanted to show both how Zeonic is moving forward in its endeavors, and how Tem and Hilda are growing together after becoming single parents. This will be shown later as we move forward with some developments off-screen. Next we have Kaiser Gihren visiting Cecilia in the hospital. While nothing too important happened, the fact that he cared to visit her at all during his free time shows how much importance Gihren places on Cecilia and how their relationship isn't the standard boss employee relationship. More on this in the future, especially now that I've just read The Plot to Assassinate Gihren, which is a fascinating insight into Zeon's domestic politics and culture that is a must read for all UC fans. Lastly in the chapter we have Artesia teaching Amuro how to skate. While it's not something huge, it shows how much his friendship with Artesia has greatly shaped Amuro's life from before. In canon before joining White Base, Fraw Bow could barely get Amuro to move out of his room for anything beyond school. Here Artesia is getting Amuro to willingly try sports and other activities that he would never dare to do on his own. While the two are not main characters, they'll definitely appear more in the future with each chapter of them showing how much their Newtype bond is increasing, with plenty of potential for romantic feelings to spark when they're older. I'll update the fic after the next chapter of Cosmic Crusade, where we'll get back into military development as Kaiser Gihren checks in on the Zeon Marines and their usage implementation of power suits. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more!